Hilary. Many thanks. Sorted

desperate das: Frustratingly, there's nothing I can do except liaise with BT Broadband. Today the line is working and stable but yesterday I had no internet connection whatever. The fault is definitely somewhere in their system, so nothing I can do.

These problems with ADSL on marginal lines have been discussed extensively here, I know people dont want to hear that its just not going to be reliable in some areas but that is the case.

You may well be better off getting downgraded.

Has anyone on here upgraded the memory on a Vaio laptop? I've had a look at the precise instructions Sony give and have been told to press in three places at the top to release the keyboard and swing it out over the touchpad.

However, I can't work out which way to push when I've got my fine screwdriver down the slot. The instructions and the reality seem to be different!

Spaceman: the manager from my exchange wouldn't agree the answer is as simple as you suggest. He says if the 2mb line worked fine for several weeks without incident and then suddenly started dropping out, creating an intermittent fault, then the line is stable enough to take 2mb but there's something else wrong.

Not enough 2mb customers have complained about their internet connections to make it a simple matter of downgrading the lot of us. He reckons some human has been messing about in the exchange!

P he could be right in your case, a lot of others are just using lines with to much loss. This can be variable as well the sypmtoms are exactly as you describe. However doing things like replacing old wires may help.

I'm having intermittent connection problems. My wireless router has a solid adsl light and a blinking staus light. Connection by modem instead seems to work fine. I assume I have a duff router? Will a reset improve things? TIA

I have changed my desktop wallpaper on xp, now the icon text is invisable how do I change just the desktop icon font colours so I can read them if the background is white ? ;-)

Richgit69
I have W/98 but theres no harm in trying, right click on the D/Top click Properties choose Appearance, on item choose D/Top to the right choose black or what ever color, click apply then OK.

kernow, for the exact meaning of the status lights you would need to look in the router manual. The ADSL signal and the phone connection used by the modem are in effect different connections so it is very possible for the ADSL signal to be bad rather than the router and at the same time the modem still work. What is the symptom you are getting? Is it dropping the ADSL connection, or just slow, or what?

driver, thanks ;;-) but it didnt work ;-(((

Richgit, that should have been the way to do it but bear in mind you are selecting the desktop colour rather than the colour of the icon text, i.e. the icon text should stand out in white against the chosen colour.

Kernow, I had similar problems recently. Mine happened after my line was upgraded to 1Mb, and I found that I struggled to maintain connection. It was resolved by plugging the router in at the master socket and working wirelessly. My line split two ways so the signal was being halved. I'm now re-routing my internal phone extensions so that the connections are in series instead of parallel and hoping this works, so I can have at least one wired connection. If it doesn't I'm going to get BT to make the master socket the one in my study and run the extensions from that.

Logged on this morning, simultaneously opening a BT internet connection, Internet Explorer and my portfolio software to be greeted with the following blue screen message: "There are no spare stack pages. It may be necessary to increase the setting on 'MinSPs' in SYSTEM.INI to prevent possible stack faults. There are currently 4 SPs allocated." What is that all about, please? I closed down and rebooted and everthing seems to be OK now. I'm on WIN 98 with an ISDN connection.

EDIT: Just had a look at the Microsoft article on this. I think I'll leave it all as is unless it happens again

Kayak, SC, thanks. My router is on the master socket already. Interesting about the upgrade as onetel have been promising 512 to 2mb for months now so maybe something is going on at the exchange. Working faultlessly atm although status light still blinking. The dropped connection has always been on first startup and logging into the router setup page confims not connected but pressing connect or refresh brings it back eventually. I'll dig up the manual later today.

TOK, don't go changing anything in the system, if it happens again it is more likely to be a driver or a hardware problem of some sort.

kernow, if you've been upgraded you will see the new speed from the router status page by logging into it.

Kayak - Thanks for the warning. The Microsoft advice looked well beyond my knowledge and ability.

Kayak - yes I've been waiting.. and waiting..and waiting - onetel speak with forked tongue - all mouth and no trousers so far.

Richgit69
Im on XP now after clicking Appearance click advance, to the right of item there is the colour change tab change that it might work if all fails you will have to change your desk top pic again.

Kernow, still the same symptoms that I had. Sounds like a call to the ISP tech support is required. I also had another problem with the connection - i.e. couldn't get one and they test the line whilst you're on the phone and you've got all your gear connected, to work out if there is a problem at the exchange. In my case they said BT had realised there was a problem and had changed something but it still wasn't right - was rectified in 24 hours.